By complete accident I captured a plane crossing in front of our sun. I was able to figure out exactly which flight it was and got connected with the pilot, who was thrilled.

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by ajamesmccarthy
image showing By complete accident I captured a plane crossing in front of our sun. I was able to figure out exactly which flight it was and got connected with the pilot, who was thrilled.

ajamesmccarthy on January 31st, 2021 at 23:22 UTC »

When you take pictures as often as I do, the likelihood of happy accidents increases. Like this plane interrupting my shot of our sun two weeks ago. Completely unplanned, yet it added something to the image that made it uniquely beautiful. After I posted the image to my IG a couple weeks ago, someone messaged me with the flight number (they were able to pin it down based on a guess of my address and the time of the capture) and reached out to the pilot, since they worked for the airline.

Take a look at the video of the transit, and notice how the plane is only visible when covering the sun, but the contrails are easily visible regardless. This is due to the contrails scattering the sun’s hydrogen alpha light, which my scope is sensitive to. It creates the illusion of a vanishing plane! This was done with a specially designed telescope, never try this with an ordinary one.

I have been capturing the sun for years, and taken thousands of batches of frames, each of which are thousands of images recorded like video, and never captured a plane like this before, so this is literally 1-in-a-million! To learn more about my astrophotography journey- check out my twitter (same as reddit username) or my instagram.

MarkHFX on January 31st, 2021 at 23:39 UTC »

The clip is stunning. The contrail effect you described looks as if the jet is causing solar flares on each side of the sun.

ForSquirrels on January 31st, 2021 at 23:44 UTC »

That would make an excellent logo, or album cover.